Bribery and corruption

20/06/2012 - The Slovak Republic must urgently meet its obligations under the Convention it signed 12 years ago and introduce an effective corporate liability regime so that Slovak companies are held accountable for the bribery of foreign public officials in cross-border business deals, says a new OECD report. The OECD Working Group on Bribery has just completed a review of the Slovak Republic’s enforcement of the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions and related instruments.

Other main recommendations of the Group are that the Slovak Republic should:

Clarify and more actively enforce its foreign bribery offence, under which no individuals or companies have been prosecuted;

Strengthen its law enforcement authorities’ ability to investigate and prosecute foreign bribery cases; and

Enact legislation to protect whistleblowers in the public and private sectors.

The report also highlighted positive aspects of the Slovak Republic’s efforts to fight foreign bribery, including efforts to strengthen its anti-bribery legislative framework according to recommendations made during its last evaluation in 2005. This includes clarifying the role of the bodies in charge of investigating and prosecuting corruption and the creation of a Specialised Criminal Court, which has exclusive jurisdiction of corruption cases. The Slovak Republic has also tried to raise awareness and transparency of all its judgements, including on plea bargaining agreements, by publishing these decisions online.

The Working Group on Bribery - made up of the 34 OECD Member countries plus Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, Russia and South Africa - adopted the report on the Slovak Republic in its third phase of monitoring implementation of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention.

The Report, available at www.oecd.org/daf/nocorruption, lists all the recommendations of the Working Group to the Slovak Republic on pages [47-51], and includes an overview of recent enforcement actions and specific legal, policy and institutional features of the Slovak Republic’s framework for fighting foreign bribery. As with other Working Group members, the Slovak Republic will submit a written report to the Working Group within two years on steps it has taken to implement the new recommendations. This report will also be made publicly available.